About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Threats against Palestinian actvist working for JCC in The Hague

Nada Kiswanson

Dutch authorities are investigating death threats against a Palestinian
rights activist in The Hague targeted because she has made submissions
to the International Criminal Court's inquiry into the 2014 Gaza
conflict. Nada Kiswanson, a legal researcher at Palestinian rights group
Al-Haq, said the threats began early this year and have continued on a
regular basis since. "My channels of communication have been totally compromised,"
Kiswanson told Reuters, adding that she had received death threats by
e-mail, via family members and in the form of flower deliveries to her
home with accompanying messages.
When she purchased an anonymous pre-paid mobile phone number,
she received a threat on it a day later. Messages had come in Dutch,
English and "broken Arabic", she said.
The Jordanian-Swedish citizen had also been called on a family
member's pre-paid Jordanian number while staying in the country, while a
relative in Sweden had been called and told that Kiswanson would be
"eliminated".
Human rights organization Amnesty International said it was
forced to temporarily close its office in The Hague for security reasons
after an employee's personal e-mail was hacked and used to send
Kiswanson a death threat.Since the start of 2015, the ICC has been conducting a
preliminary examination of possible crimes committed by both sides in
the Gaza conflict.Although the war crimes court's cases are always highly
contentious, rights workers have never before been threatened in the
Netherlands. Dutch authorities confirmed they were investigating threats
against Kiswanson, first reported publicly by newspaper NRC Handelsblad,
and that they had put in place measures to protect her.
Activists and witnesses linked to ICC cases have been
threatened in the past. Judges at the court have said threats against
witnesses contributed to the collapse of the crimes against humanity
case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta last year.